The bridal chamber smelled of medicinal herbs and old money—like someone had tried to bury sickness under silk and incense.
Sienna shut the heavy door behind her with a soft click.She didn't turn the lock out of fear.She did it for privacy.
Silas had collapsed onto the carved mahogany bed, still in his ceremonial robes, breath shallow and uneven.His skin—already pale—was now ghost-white, damp with sweat.He looked like a man fading in real time.
Sienna didn't rush to his side.She stood there, in the doorway, and studied him.
Really studied him.
The dark circles under his eyes.The faint tremor in his fingers.The pulse fluttering at his throat—too fast. Too irregular.
This wasn't just illness.
"You've been poisoned," she said flatly.
Silas's lips curled upward in a shadow of a smile."And you're just realizing this now, wife?"
The word hung between them. Sharp-edged. Unfamiliar.
Sienna ignored the barb and moved to the bed. She knelt beside him, pressing two fingers to his wrist. The rhythm beneath his skin stuttered and surged—erratic and strained, like a heart trying to outrun its own doom.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Who did this to you?"
Silas's gaze met hers. Dark. Focused. Too lucid for someone on the brink of collapse.
"The same people who killed your teacher."
The world tilted.
Sienna's fingers froze against his skin.Her breath caught—but only for a second.
Then she straightened. "Prove it."
Without a word, Silas reached beneath his pillow and pulled out a yellowed photograph—edges worn, corners curling. He held it between two fingers and let it dangle in the air, like a challenge.
Sienna took it.
The photo was grainy but clear enough. A younger Silas stood beside a tall man in a white coat, smiling at the camera.
Her teacher.
Alive. Whole.Before the river.Before the autopsy.Before everything shattered.
"We worked together," Silas said, voice hoarse but steady. "Until someone decided we knew too much."
Sienna stared at the photograph like it might move, speak, breathe.
It didn't.
But something inside her cracked.
Her teacher—brilliant, kind, fearless—had died for secrets. And now, here they were. Buried in the same bed as her arranged husband.
"Then why marry me?" she asked, her voice tight, cold.
Silas didn't look away."Because you're the only one who can finish what he started."